A great similarity is observable among these writers of fiction, both in their incidents and the identity of their phrases; an evidence that these inventors were often drawing from a common source. In these ages of manuscripts they practised without scruple many artifices, and might safely appropriate the happiest passages of their anonymous brothers.[10] One Romance would produce many by variations; the same story would serve as the groundwork of another: and the later Romancer, to set at rest the scruples of the reader, usually found fault with his predecessors, who, having written the same story, had not given "the true one!" By this innocent imposture, or this ingenious impudence, they designed to confer on their Romance the dignity of History. The metrical Romances pretend to translate some ancient "Cronik" which might be consulted at Caerleon, the magical palace of the vanished Arthur: or they give their own original Romance as from some "Latyn auctour," whose name is cautiously withheld; or they practise other devices, pretending to have drawn their work from "the Greek," or "the English," and even from an "unknown language." In some Colophons of the prose Romances the names of real persons are assigned as the writers;[11] but the same Romance is equally ascribed to different persons, and works are given as translations which in fact are originals. Amid this prevailing confusion, and these contradictory statements, we must agree with the editor of Warton, that we cannot with any confidence name the author of any of these prose Romances. RITSON has aptly treated these pseudonymous translators as "men of straw." We may say of them all as the antiquary DOUCE, in the agony of his baffled researches after one of their favourite authorities, a Will o' the Wisp named Lollius, exclaimed, somewhat gravely--"Of Lollius it will become every one to speak with diffidence." Ariosto seems to have caught this bantering humour of mystifying his readers in his own Gothic Romance, gravely referring his extravagances to "the Chronicle of the pseudo Archbishop Turpin" for his voucher! What was with the Italian but a playful stroke of satire on the pretended verity of Turpin himself, may have covered a more serious design with these ancient romance-writers. Père Menestrier ascribed these productions to Heralds, who, he says, were always selected for their talents, their knowledge and their experience; qualifications not the most essential for romance-writing. "According to the bad taste of those ignorant ages," he proceeds, "it is from them so many Romances on feats of arms and on chivalry issued, by which they designed to elevate their own office, and to celebrate their voyages in different lands."[12] St. Palaye, in adopting this notion of these Heraldical Romancers, with more knowledge of the ancient Romancers than the good Father possessed, has added a more numerous body, the _Trouvères_, who,